Body Snatching

Body Snatching PDF Author: Suzanne M. Shultz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786422326
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Also called "resurrectionists," body snatchers, were careful not to take anything from the grave but the body--stealing only the corpse was not considered a felony since the courts had already said that a dead body had no owner. ("Burking"--i.e., murder--was the alternative method of supplying "stiffs" to medical schools; it is covered here as well). This book recounts the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, why body snatching came about and how disinterment was done, and presents information on: efforts to prevent the practice, a group of professional grave robbers, and the European experience.

Body Snatching

Body Snatching PDF Author: Suzanne M. Shultz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786422326
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Get Book Here

Book Description
Also called "resurrectionists," body snatchers, were careful not to take anything from the grave but the body--stealing only the corpse was not considered a felony since the courts had already said that a dead body had no owner. ("Burking"--i.e., murder--was the alternative method of supplying "stiffs" to medical schools; it is covered here as well). This book recounts the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, why body snatching came about and how disinterment was done, and presents information on: efforts to prevent the practice, a group of professional grave robbers, and the European experience.

The Body Snatcher’s Wife

The Body Snatcher’s Wife PDF Author: Barbra Reifel
Publisher: Post Hill Press
ISBN: 1642933198
Category : Husband and wife
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Barbra Reifel, former wife of notorious Body Snatcher Michael Mastromarino, has appeared on Oprah, Nancy Grace, ID Discovery, and Lifetime. Never before has her raw account been laid so bare. Fairytale shattered, deceit and danger beyond her wildest nightmares, betrayal, addiction, abuse, ultimate crime, and utter destruction beyond reason—her riveting story is one of so many. To survive, protect her children and family, and combat the monster who was her husband, Barbra evolved…a dreamer turned badass, playing his game to the bittersweet end.

The Body-snatcher

The Body-snatcher PDF Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grave robbing
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description


Bodysnatchers

Bodysnatchers PDF Author: Suzie Lennox
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473866561
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
The grim history of England’s bodysnatching trade: “Lennox’s thorough exploration is riveting” (Naomi Clifford, author of The Disappearance of Maria Glenn). From the string of murders committed by Burke and Hare, a pair of ghouls who are still the stuff of pop culture legend, to the lesser-known but equally gruesome grave-robbing exploits of Henry Gillies, William Patrick, and Joseph Grainger, here is the fascinating true chronicle of England’s “Resurrection Men.” During the winter months of 1742–1832, selling fresh cadavers to anatomists up and down the country, all in aid of medical advancement, was the surest way to earn a living for desperate men. After all, anatomy schools would pay high prices for corpses to dissect—the fresher the better. And they asked no questions as to their origins. This resulted in the criminal underworld of the “Sack ‘em up Men” who left behind disinterred churchyards and burial grounds, and spread fear and horror throughout the United Kingdom. In Bodysnatchers, Suzie Lennox unearths the truth behind the macabre tales, separating fact from folktale, and setting the record straight about Britain’s gruesome, often forgotten history.

Stealing Lincoln’s Body

Stealing Lincoln’s Body PDF Author: Thomas J. Craughwell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674030397
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
In a lively and dramatic narrative, Thomas J. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context.

The Knife Man

The Knife Man PDF Author: Wendy Moore
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307419452
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The vivid, often gruesome portrait of the 18th-century pioneering surgeon and father of modern medicine, John Hunter. When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared. From humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron. An insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory. Although a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.” In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.

The Devil’s Dictionary

The Devil’s Dictionary PDF Author: Ambrose Bierce
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
“Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Death, Dissection and the Destitute

Death, Dissection and the Destitute PDF Author: Ruth Richardson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226712400
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns regarding organs for transplant and human tissue for research.

The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812

The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812 PDF Author: James Blake Bailey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anatomy
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description


A Traffic of Dead Bodies

A Traffic of Dead Bodies PDF Author: Michael Sappol
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
A Traffic of Dead Bodies enters the sphere of bodysnatching medical students, dissection-room pranks, and anatomical fantasy. It shows how nineteenth-century American physicians used anatomy to develop a vital professional identity, while claiming authority over the living and the dead. It also introduces the middle-class women and men, working people, unorthodox healers, cultural radicals, entrepreneurs, and health reformers who resisted and exploited anatomy to articulate their own social identities and visions. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the American medical profession: a proliferation of practitioners, journals, organizations, sects, and schools. Anatomy lay at the heart of the medical curriculum, allowing American medicine to invest itself with the authority of European science. Anatomists crossed the boundary between life and death, cut into the body, reduced it to its parts, framed it with moral commentary, and represented it theatrically, visually, and textually. Only initiates of the dissecting room could claim the privileged healing status that came with direct knowledge of the body. But anatomy depended on confiscation of the dead--mainly the plundered bodies of African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. As black markets in cadavers flourished, so did a cultural obsession with anatomy, an obsession that gave rise to clashes over the legal, social, and moral status of the dead. Ministers praised or denounced anatomy from the pulpit; rioters sacked medical schools; and legislatures passed or repealed laws permitting medical schools to take the bodies of the destitute. Dissection narratives and representations of the anatomical body circulated in new places: schools, dime museums, popular lectures, minstrel shows, and sensationalist novels. Michael Sappol resurrects this world of graverobbers and anatomical healers, discerning new ligatures among race and gender relations, funerary practices, the formation of the middle-class, and medical professionalization. In the process, he offers an engrossing and surprisingly rich cultural history of nineteenth-century America.